Fianna Fáil and the alternative Fine Gael/Labour alliance set out their claims to government yesterday in sharp rhetorical exchanges marking the escalation of the campaign for next year's general election.
At events designed largely to give them a platform to make their cases for election, both insisted they offered the only chance of a coherent and stable government.
Fianna Fáil Ministers acknowledged the election campaign would be "very open".
At a joint press conference in Mullingar, Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte said Fine Gael and Labour would be "the only electable coalition combination to publish an agreed platform before the next election", and therefore the only one that could be trusted.
At a press conference in Westport at the end of a two-day party "think-in", Minister for Finance Brian Cowen said Labour and Fine Gael did not have coherent policies and again claimed they were uncosted. He cited as an example the differences between the parties on risk equalisation in the health insurance market.
He said economic success could not be taken for granted, and Fianna Fáil had the policies required to ensure economic stability.
Rejecting the claim that they were divided on policy, Fine Gael and Labour yesterday published an agreed policy on mental health and promised more joint documents on all areas of health, crime and the economy in the coming months.
Mr Rabbitte said it was true that there were differences between the parties "and that is understandable because they are different parties".
However, on the health services he said there was "a larger measure of agreement and convergence between the policies of the two parties on the health services than on any other issue I can think of".
The alternative government's core charge against Fianna Fáil yesterday was that it might end up in government with the support of Sinn Féin.
A Fianna Fáil spokeswoman said later that the Taoiseach had on a number of occasions said there would be "no deal" with Sinn Féin.
Yesterday's verbal skirmishing marks the start of a series of party think-ins, with high-profile meetings of Labour, the Green Party and the Progressive Democrats to come in the next few weeks.
The resumption of the Dáil at the end of this month will bring the most intense political session of this Government's term as the parties position themselves for what Fianna Fáil Ministers acknowledged yesterday would be a very open election campaign.
Mr Cowen described the election as "an open race", while Minister for Enterprise Micheál Martin said there was "an electorate out there to be won".
Mr Cowen said the reason for his party's poor opinion poll performances was that it was not effectively communicating the progress made by the Government in areas such as health, transport and infrastructure.
Mr Kenny, however, said it was because the Government was "smug, arrogant and out of touch".
"This will probably be the most exciting general election for many years, and we intend to win because we are getting massive support from the people."